Monday, April 3, 2017
Upper Hutt, New Zealand
TRAVEL QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - Andre Gide
Woke up at 7 with the alarm to an overcast day, just a few peaks of sun still showing…..farewell, my friend the Sun, for a few days….
Got dressed and made tea/coffee and came up with the plan: drive to Wellington to sit out the rain. Plenty to do there in the rain - museums, cafes, movie theater, shopping. Got packed up and ready and were pulling out of the campground...

Transition Day - ferry across to Wellington and the North Island. Up early for our trip meeting - then wait to go to the ferry landing as a group. Then wait for the ferry. At least it was a very smooth 3-hour trip. And not a bad lunch.
We disembarked in Wellington, the capitol, and headed straight for Te Papa, the National Museum on New Zealand. It's a grand building, only 17 years old, right downtown and right on the waterfront. (Now why would you surround a huge, wonderful museum with 2-hour meter parking? I guess government is the same...

What an amazing ferry trip! The weather was quite grey and overcast when we sailed out of Picton and alongside the headland to The Snout where we walked yesterday, but as we sailed out along Queen Charlotte Sound the sun came out, so that by the time we reached the Tory Channel the sky and the waters were both a deep shade of blue, making the beautiful scenery look even more spectacular. Once out into open waters of the Cook Strait this notoriously rough stretch of water was completely flat calm. As we approached the North Island though,...

Merry Christmas to all my family, friends and loved ones back home in the UK and where ever you are in the world.
I hope you all have a wonderful, white Christmas (as long as the snow hasn't annoyed you too much already) and that you enjoy your Christmas dinners and good old British Christmas Day TV, or mulled wine, or both.
This morning I had a full English breakfast and I look forward to roast pork for dinner later on today with Eric, with all the trimmings including apple sauce and roast potatoes!
It's incredibly hot here today, I took a...

At the end of September I was lucky enough to spend a few days with Beth and Keith (from Moscow to Hong Kong), as they were passing through Wellington on the Kiwi Experience. I met them in Te Papa, we went up Mount Victoria which was incredibly windy, had a few meals together over the three days and a night out in Wellington. I also showed them where I'm staying in Upper Hutt, did a bit of shopping and they had my lost photos on their netbook which I could copy and have again which was brilliant.

My Uncle, Eric lives at the bottom of the North Island in Upper Hutt near Wellington in New Zealand. He met me at the arrivals gate on Tuesday when I flew into Auckland. It was a really good flight with Air New Zealand, and I watched the film Valentine's Day which was better than I thought and most of Funny People.
We were booked into the AKL Airport Lodge for the night because Auckland to Wellington is about a 9 hour drive! So we went to Pak'n'Save which is a really big and cheap supermarket which sells pretty much everything, and the...

Waipukurau to Upper Hutt, February 17
Morning was calm, cloudy and cool as we hit the road just after 9 o’clock on the way toward Wellington. Early out of ‘Wai-Puke’ the road was fast as the terrain was flat agricultural land, mainly grazing for sheep and cattle, with occasional corn fields, the hills way off in the distance. We followed along the Manawatu River from near Manganatainoka, site of the Tui Brewery where we stopped to have a look through their humorous Tui museum, everything tongue in cheek and worth a few chuckles. There were...

Drive to Upper Hut..... Hardly any driving today. We drove about 1 mile from the campground to the ferry terminal and found out that the ferry was late. We had about 3 hours to kill. We went in the terminal and had coffee. We loaded on the ferry without incident. We all drove in the back of the boat and did a 180 degree turn to be pointed back out for off loading in Wellington. The ferry trip was 3 hours, and 1.5 hours of that was on open water and they had the seas classified "less than ideal". Here in New Zealand they have there own way...